Iraq isn't like Viet Nam - Democratic Underground

Ediacara

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Mon Dec-04-06 04:15 PM
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Iraq isn't like Viet Nam

It's like the Philippines. After the US ousted the Spanish from the Philippines in the Spanish-American War, US troops occupied the country, imposed democracy on our terms, and fought a bloody guerrilla war for fourteen years that resulted in over 9,000 American casualties and at least a quarter of a million Filipino deaths. A spooky parallel can be drawn by the United States declaring the Philippines War over 11 years before it actually ended. Read all about it.

I'll leave you with a quote about the War from Mark Twain,

"There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a government according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess, a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation.

Does this sound familiar?

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ClassWarrior

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Mon Dec-04-06 04:19 PM
Response to Original message

1. It's like VietNam enough in key ways to be useful to us...

...in drawing a parallel with another quagmire that many Americans can still remember.

NGU.

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Ediacara

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Mon Dec-04-06 04:21 PM
Response to Reply #1

2. That's true

The reason Viet Nam keeps coming up is that Viet Nam vets are still alive, but I think the whole makeup of the war matches the Philippines much more closely.

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Lone_Star_Dem

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Mon Dec-04-06 04:22 PM
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3. Yes, but most Americans don't even know this ever took place

To use a reference to Vietnam resonates with millions more Americans than a Philippines reference would.

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PoiBoy

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Mon Dec-04-06 04:37 PM
Response to Original message

4. Great information...

..thanks for the link...

I've always been interested in the Phillipine-American War because during this era, the U.S. was apparently involved in a colonization mentality that resulted in the annexation of Puerto Rico (1898) and my home state, Hawaii (1900), as well as possessing Wake Island, Midway and Guam, I believe...

Again, thanks for the great info..!!
:hi:

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endarkenment

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Mon Dec-04-06 05:18 PM
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5. fair enough but:

describing what we did there as "imposed democracy on our terms" is nonsense. We imposed a regime friendly to our economic interests. We certainly did not impose democracy, and it took the Philippines almost 100 years to undo what we did and arrive at something resembling a democratic republic.

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DemoTex

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Mon Dec-04-06 05:33 PM
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6. More Mark Twain on US imperialism at the "fin de siècle":

I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Phillipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass.

Mark Twain
"A Salutation from the 19th to the 20th Century," 12/31/1900

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NNN0LHI

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Mon Dec-04-06 05:42 PM
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7. Iraq is Bush's Philippines just doesn't have the visuals of Iraq is Bush's Vietnam n/t

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